It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780062874795
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Cultura del lugar de trabajo

In this timely manifesto, the authors of the New York Times bestseller Rework broadly reject the prevailing notion that long hours, aggressive hustle, and "whatever it takes" are required to run a successful business today.

In Rework, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson introduced a new path to working effectively. Now, they build on their message with a bold, iconoclastic strategy for creating the ideal company culture—what they call "the calm company." Their approach directly attack the chaos, anxiety, and stress that plagues millions of workplaces and hampers billions of workers every day.

Long hours, an excessive workload, and a lack of sleep have become a badge of honor for modern professionals. But it should be a mark of stupidity, the authors argue. Sadly, this isn't just a problem for large organizations—individuals, contractors, and solopreneurs are burning themselves out the same way. The answer to better productivity isn't more hours—it's less waste and fewer things that induce distraction and persistent stress.

It's time to stop celebrating Crazy, and start celebrating Calm, Fried and Hansson assert.

Fried and Hansson have the proof to back up their argument. "Calm" has been the cornerstone of their company's culture since Basecamp began twenty years ago. Destined to become the management guide for the next generation, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work is a practical and inspiring distillation of their insights and experiences. It isn't a book telling you what to do. It's a book showing you what they've done—and how any manager or executive no matter the industry or size of the company, can do it too.

Feed Your Culture

We’re Not Family

Companies love to declare “We’re all family here.” No, you’re not. Neither are we at Basecamp. We’re coworkers. That doesn’t mean we don’t care about one another. That doesn’t mean we won’t go out of our way for one another. We do care and we do help. But a family we are not. And neither is your business.

Furthermore, Basecamp is not “our baby.” Basecamp is our product. We’ll make it great, but we won’t take a bullet for it. And neither would you for yours.

We don’t need to bullshit ourselves or anyone else. We’re people who work together to make a product. And we’re proud of it. That’s enough.

Whenever executives talk about how their company is really like a big ol’ family, beware. They’re usually not referring to how the company is going to protect you no matter what or love you unconditionally. You know, like healthy families would. Their motive is rather more likely to be a unidirectional form of sacrifice: yours.

Because by invoking the image of the family, the valor of doing whatever it takes naturally follows. You’re not just working long nights or skipping a vacation to further the bottom line; no, no, you’re doing this for the family. Such a blunt emotional appeal is only needed if someone is trying to make you forget about your rational self-interest.

You don’t have to pretend to be a family to be courteous. Or kind. Or protective. All those values can be expressed even better in principles, policies, and, most important, actions.

Besides, don’t you already have a family or group of friends who feel like blood? The modern company isn’t a street gang filled with orphans trying to make it in the tough, tough world. Trying to supplant the family you likely already have is just another way to attempt to put the needs of the company above the needs of your actual family. That’s a sick ploy.

The best companies aren’t families. They’re supporters of families. Allies of families. They’re there to provide healthy, fulfilling work environments so that when workers shut their laptops at a reasonable hour, they’re the best husbands, wives, parents, siblings, and children they can be.

They’ll Do as You Do

You can’t credibly promote the virtues of reasonable hours, plentiful rest, and a healthy lifestyle to employees if you’re doing the opposite as the boss. When the top dog puts in mad hours, the rest of the pack is bound to follow along. It doesn’t matter what you say, it matters what you do.

It gets even worse in a business with layers. If your manager’s manager is setting a bad example, that impression rolls down the hierarchy and gathers momentum like a snowball.

Take those trite stories about the CEO who only sleeps four hours each night, is the first in the parking lot, has three meetings before breakfast, and turns out the light after midnight. What a hero! Truly someone who lives and breathes the company before themselves!

No, not a hero. If the only way you can inspire the troops is by a regimen of exhaustion, it’s time to look for some deeper substance. Because what trickles down is less likely to be admiration but dread and fear instead. A leader who sets an example of self-sacrifice can’t help but ask self-sacrifice of others.

Maybe that’s a valiant quality on the battlefield, but it’s hardly one in the office. The fate of most companies is not decided in fierce contests of WHO CAN DO THE LATEST CONFERENCE CALL or WHO CAN SET THE MOST PUNISHING DEADLINE.

If you, as the boss, want employees to take vacations, you have to take a vacation. If you want them to stay home when they’re sick, you can’t come into the office sniffling. If you don’t want them to feel guilty for taking their kids to Legoland on the weekend, post some pictures of yourself there with yours.

Workaholism is a contagious disease. You can’t stop the spread if you’re the one bringing it into the office. Disseminate some calm instead.

The Trust Battery

Ever been in a relationship where you’re endlessly annoyed by every little thing the other person does? In isolation, the irritating things aren’t objectively annoying. But in those cases it’s never really about the little things. There’s something else going on.

The same thing can happen at work. Someone says something, or acts in a certain way, and someone else blows up about it. From afar it looks like an overreaction. You can’t figure out what the big deal is. There’s something else going on.

Here’s what’s going on: The trust battery is dead.

Tobias Lütke, CEO at Shopify, coined the term. Here’s how he explained it in a New York Times interview: “Another concept we talk a lot about is something called a ‘trust battery.’ It’s charged at 50 percent when people are first hired. And then every time you work with someone at the company, the trust battery between the two of you is either charged or discharged, based on things like whether you deliver on what you promise.”

The adoption of this term at Basecamp helped us assess work relationships with greater clarity. It removed the natural instinct to evaluate whether someone is “right” about their feelings about another person (which is a nonsense concept to begin with). By measuring the charge on the trust battery, we have context to frame the conflict.

The reality is that the trust battery is a summary of all interactions to date. If you want to recharge the battery, you have to do different things in the future. Only new actions and new attitudes count.

Plus, it’s personal. Alice’s trust battery with Bob is different from Carol’s trust battery with Bob. Bob may be at 85 percent with Alice but only 10 percent with Carol. Bob isn’t going to recharge his battery with Carol just by acting differently with Alice. The work of recharging relationships is mostly one to one. That’s why two people who get along often can’t understand how someone else could have a problem with their good friend.

A low trust battery is at the core of many personal disputes at work. It powers stressful encounters and anxious moments. When the battery is drained, everything is wrong, everything is judged harshly. A 10 percent charge equals a 90 percent chance an interaction will go south.

Having good relationships at work takes, err, work. The kind that can only begin once you’re honest about where you’re starting from. The worst thing you can do is pretend that interpersonal feelings don’t matter. That work should “just be about work.” That’s just ignorant. Humans are humans whether they’re at work or at home.

Don’t Be the Last to Know

When the boss says “My door is always open,” it’s a cop-out, not an invitation. One that puts the onus of speaking up entirely on the employees.

The only time such an empty gesture serves any purpose is after the shit has already hit the fan. Then it can be dragged out of the drawer with “Why didn’t you just come and tell me?” and “I told you if you ever had an issue with anything that you should come talk to me.” *eyeroll*

What the boss most needs to hear is where they and the organization are falling short. But who knows how a superior is going to take such pointed feedback? It’s a minefield, and every employee knows someone who’s been blown up for raising the wrong issue at the wrong time to the wrong boss. Why on earth would they risk their career on an empty promise of an open door?

They generally won’t, and they shouldn’t have to.

If the boss really wants to know what’s going on, the answer is embarrassingly obvious: They have to ask! Not vague, self-congratulatory bullshit questions like “What can we do even better?” but the hard ones like “What’s something nobody dares to talk about?” or “Are you afraid of anything at work?” or “Is there anything you worked on recently that you wish you could do over?” Or even more specific ones like “What do you think we could have done differently to help Jane succeed?” or “What advice would you give before we start on the big website redesign project?”

Posing real, pointed questions is the only way to convey that it’s safe to provide real answers. And even then it’s going to take a while. Maybe you get 20 percent of the story the first time you ask, then 50 percent after a while, and if you’ve really nailed it as a trustworthy boss, you may get to 80 percent. Forget about ever getting the whole story.

The fact is that the higher you go in an organization, the less you’ll know what it’s really like. It might seem perverse, but the CEO is usually the last to know. With great power comes great ignorance.

So at Basecamp we try to get out and ask rather than just wait at the door. Not all the time, because you shouldn’t ask before you’re willing and able to act on the answer, but often enough to know most of what’s going on most of the time.

The Owner’s Word Weighs a Ton

There’s no such thing as a casual suggestion when it comes from the owner of the business. When the person who signs the paychecks mentions this or that, this or that invariably becomes a top priority.

So something as minor as “Are we doing enough on Instagram?” can shoot Instagram to the top of the marketing priority list. It was a mere suggestion, but it’s taken as a mandate. “Why would she be talking about Instagram unless she really thought Instagram was super important?”

It only gets worse if employees find the owner pulling at the weeds themselves. If the boss is looking over there, then clearly we should all be looking over there! They might just have been curious or looking for something to do, but that’s not the impression it makes.

An owner unknowingly scattering people’s attention is a common cause of the question “Why’s everyone working so much but nothing’s getting done?”

It takes great restraint as the leader of an organization not to keep lobbing ideas at everyone else. Every such idea is a pebble that’s going to cause ripples when it hits the surface. Throw enough pebbles in the pond and the overall picture becomes as clear as mud.

Evading responsibility with a “But it’s just a suggestion” isn’t going to calm the waters. Only knowing the weight of the owner’s word will.

Low-Hanging Fruit Can Still Be Out of Reach

You’ve probably said or heard something like this before:

“We’ve never had anyone in business development, so there must be a ton of low-hanging fruit she can go after with just a little bit of effort.”

“We’ve never done any social media outreach, so imagine how much new traffic” —low-hanging fruit —“we’ll get if we just start tweeting stuff out.”

“We’ve never followed up with customers who cancel to better understand why they left, so I’m certain there’s plenty of low-hanging fruit to be had if we do those interviews.”

We’re definitely guilty of having thought about things in these terms. By definition, pursuing low-hanging fruit should be a no-brainer for any business. An easy opportunity simply waiting to be seized. Little sweat, all reward!

The problem, as we’ve learned over time, is that the further away you are from the...